The Great Upheaval: Masterpieces from the Guggenheim Collection, 1910-1918

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The Great Upheaval bears witness to how dazzlingly fruitful an eight-year period can be….In the brief interlude before the outbreak of war, original ideas sprang up in such profusion that a single metaphor cannot contain them: they skyrocketed, snowballed, mushroomed, and multiplied

Ariella Budick, Financial Times

The Great Upheaval: Masterpieces from the Guggenheim Collection, 1910-1918 showcased the dynamism, creativity, and innovation of art produced in Europe in the years leading up to and during the First World War. Featuring paintings from the collection of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum by artists such as Constantin Brancusi, Marc Chagall, Marcel Duchamp, Vasily Kandinsky, Fernand Leger, Henri Matisse, Amedeo Modigliani, Piet Mondrian and Pablo Picasso, among others, the exhibition chronologically traced the achievements of these tumultuous years as artists experimented with new ways to create art while launching such movements as expressionism, futurism and cubism.

The exhibition’s focus on the years 1910 to 1918 represented an intense chapter in European and world history, marked by sweeping social change, technological developments and scientific advances. During this time of tremendous creativity and innovation, European cities were evolving, and artists, who were founding groups, staging exhibitions and issuing manifestoes, likewise adapted and responded to 20th-century modernity.

The Great Upheaval spotlighted the dynamism of this fertile period — as artists hurtled toward abstraction and the ultimate “great upheaval” of a catastrophic war — while presenting some of the foundational modern masterpieces that shaped the art of future generations.

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